Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series)
Page 29
My post-CIA intention was simply to stick to the facts as they were presented in the words of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the essays published by al-Qaeda’s theologians, commentators, strategists, and allies. For me, these words presented a compelling and consistent story of a growing group of Islamist militants bent on driving the United States from the Middle East and the Islamic world generally in order to remove U.S. protection—military, economic, and political-diplomatic—from Israel and incumbent Muslim regimes so that they can be destroyed. On review, those words also left the strong impression that these men were intelligent, patient, calculating, ruthless, hard-working, and driven by genuine religious motivation, an always dangerous combination of attributes in any enemy. Their multiple successful attacks against the interests of the United States and its allies between 1992 and 2004, moreover, tended to confirm both their intent and their ability to wage a destructive and geographically widespread war against America.
By sticking to these facts, I thought it would be a fairly straightforward task to accurately explain the nature of the Islamist threat and the motivation of those prosecuting it. I likewise believed that Americans would be relieved to learn that the Islamist threat was not the nihilistic and apocalyptic one described by their leaders—the annihilation of American society, all Christians and Jews, Western civilization, etc.—but rather a much more limited one that focused not on U.S. culture and society but almost exclusively on what the U.S. government did in the Islamic world. Better for Americans to know, I thought, that they faced a smart, thinking enemy, with limited war aims, and not the irrational, inchoate foe President Bush described: “They hate Christianity. They hate Judaism. They hate everything that’s not them.”4 My message, then, had nothing whatsoever to do with promoting empathy or sympathy for America’s Islamist enemies. My goal was to more precisely define how the enemy thought, his motivation and war aims, and the nature of the threat he posed. Having a solid handle on these issues is the indispensable grounding that is necessary before we can do what we must do—utterly destroy America’s Islamist foe.
Well, it did not turn out to be as easy a task as I thought. Republicans and their media advocates decided that, by explaining what bin Laden and al-Qaeda were up to and motivated by, and why U.S. efforts to defeat them were not yet nearly adequate to the job, I was a Bush-basher, an America-hater, a liberal-appeaser, and a mole who worked for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign from inside the CIA. From the Democratic side, I was identified as a war-monger, a strident nationalist (apparently American nationalism is hate speech for Democrats), an isolationist, and an unreconstructed Reaganite. (They had me cold on the last one.) The one thing that both sides agreed on was that I was indisputably a rank anti-Semite who wanted to abandon Israel. On this issue, American-citizen Israel-firsters led the charge, and their work was given a certain gravitas by Commentary’s senior editor, Gabriel Schoenfeld. The latter wrote an article that would have been lawsuit-worthy except that the anti–hate speech laws are written to exempt from protection any individuals the Israel-firsters target for public scourging as anti-Semites, which is their long-standing and only real talent. A small sampling of this reasoned and mature criticism of my work follows, none of which, of course, contained a single point that demonstrated any substantive value America derives from its relationship with Israel.
Writing as if he stole [Patrick] Buchanan’s playbook, Scheuer’s chapter head on this topic [Israel] is called “The Burden of an Eternal Dependent.” He blasts what he calls America’s “overwhelmingly one-way alliance with Israel” and, like Buchanan and other sniveling weasels of the far right, complains that any criticism of the alliance is branded anti-Semitism…Maybe the problem was the CIA. Because if an idiot like Scheuer could be entrusted with U.S. intelligence, then the people running the CIA weren’t as smart as we were led to believe. When former CIA officials wind up on the same page as Michael Moore and Pat Buchanan, you know something was very wrong at Langley. It’s high time these fools were turned out on their ears. [Jonathan Tobin, December 16, 2004]5
Sentiments like these [criticisms of Israel] mark the author of Imperial Hubris [Scheuer] as something of a political hybrid—a cross, not to put too fine a point on it, between an overwrought Buchanan and a raving Chomskyite. This alone, one might think, should have unfitted him for a high position within the CIA…All of which leaves only the question: How did a person of such demonstrable mediocrity of mind and unhinged views achieve the rank he did in the CIA, and how could so manifestly wayward and damaging a work have been publicized by someone in the Agency’s employ. [Gabriel Schoenfeld, March 2005.]6
Not to be outdone by mere academics, a former head of the CIA’s “Bin Laden Unit” at its Counterterrorism Center, Michael Scheuer, reacted to “The Lobby” [the paper by Walt and Mearsheimer] with his own claim that “U.S. citizens have been the subject of a political action campaign designed and executed by Israel”…With people like Scheuer in charge at Langley, Mein Kampf could well become required reading. [Morris J. Amitay, April 20, 2006.]7
What the foregoing texts by Americans clearly say is that their fellow Americans cannot be patriots if they use their right to free speech to question any aspect of the U.S.-Israeli relationship; that U.S. citizens should not be allowed to work at CIA—or presumably elsewhere in the U.S. government—if they are not Israel-firsters and a pogrom is needed to remove critics of Israel from federal employment; and that any American who claims that the impact of unqualified U.S. support for Israel in the Muslim world is unreservedly damaging to U.S. interests is a “sniveling weasel,” an “idiot,” a person with “demonstrable mediocrity of mind and unhinged views,” and that old-reliable epithet of the Israel-firsters’ scourge-machine, a Mein Kampf–reading Nazi.
Besides the authors listed above, other distinguished U.S. citizens are reliable Israel-firsters. These men, for example, fairly swarmed to attack Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer when they published an article critical of the influence that pro-Israel groups are allowed to have on U.S. policies.8 On this occasion, the list of U.S. citizens acting as Israel’s thought police was impressive: James Carroll, Max Boot, Steven Simon, Alan Dershowitz, David Gergen, Christopher Hitchens, Marvin Kalb, and Eliot Cohen.9 These authors claim or imply that criticism of Israel by U.S. citizens is anti-Semitism, and some have such contempt for their fellow citizens that they practice the Big Lie by asserting definitively that there is no such thing as an “Israeli lobby.”10 Among these writers are found the takfiris of contemporary American politics, men who, with delicious irony, mirror Muslim takfiris in taking it upon themselves to decide who is and who is not a “good American,” then mete out punishment to those of their countrymen who do not make the grade.11
These are all dangerous men who, in my judgment, are seeking to place de facto limitations on the First Amendment to protect the nation of their primary attachment. They are the type of individuals about whom General Washington warned his countrymen, noting that the success of such men in limiting free speech would cause disaster for America. “For if men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of mankind,” General Washington told his officers in 1783, “reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”12
Let me pause here to say, first, that the Israel-firsters’ attempts to silence criticism by Americans of the manner in which their government conducts the U.S. relationship with Israel are now leading the U.S. lamb to the slaughter; and second, that I have never accepted and will forever reject the idea that to intensely dislike the nature of the relationship the U.S. government has fabricated with Israel, and to believe that that relationship is not only a burden but a cancer on America’s ability to protect its genuine national interests—which I do believe—equates to either anti-Semitism or a lack of American patriotism. Indeed, m
y own view would be that those Americans who are quickest to wield the debate-silencing anti-Semitism sword are either the most suspect in the realm of loyalty or are simply resolute liars who champion the fantasy of identical U.S. and Israeli national interests.
Let me be clear: the only country I care about is the United States. I care not a whit whether or not Israel survives. I likewise do not care if Zambia, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Papua-New Guinea, Spain, or most any other nation survives. Foreign nations are important only insofar as they can benefit America, and our relations with them should be predicated on that consideration and not on emotion, irrational guilt, Pollyanna-ish ideas about democracy, or the political influence bought by corrupt and corrupting lobbies, be they supporting Israel, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Greece, or Lebanon. America should associate with those nation-states that benefit America, steer clear of those that do not, and run as fast and as far as possible from those that seek to involve us in fights in which we have no stake, particularly fights between religions. The only exceptions to this general rule should be Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to each of which we owe a debt of honor due to our collective, bloody, and successful efforts to prevent the triumph of tyranny in the twentieth century. In sum, let me bluntly say to the Israel-firsters, in the words Franklin Roosevelt used to defy the New Deal opponents he called Economic Royalists: “They are unanimous in their hatred for me—and I welcome their hatred.”13
Now back to the business at hand. The lesson I learned after resigning from the CIA was that sticking to the facts was not going to do the trick, and if I wanted to get a hearing and give Americans a chance to discern the prevarications of their governing elite, I would need to find a vehicle that did not raise hackles and cause vitriol to spurt the minute the message began playing. Then over the summer of 2005, I happened to be listening to a course on CD-ROM called Tocqueville and the American Experiment,14 presented by William R. Cook, a historian from the State University of New York at Geneseo. The entire course was excellent, but specifically Dr. Cook’s lectures on Tocqueville suggested the reason why my arguments had so angered virtually the entire American political spectrum. Writing after his tour of America in the 1830s, Tocqueville said that he had found,
There is nothing more annoying in the habits of life [in America] than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner would indeed consent to praise much in their country; but he would want to be permitted to blame something, and this he is absolutely refused. America is therefore a country of freedom where, in order not to wound anyone, a foreigner must not speak freely.15
Well, okay. Tocqueville, I think, was right, thus validating Walter A. McDougall’s witty but starkly perceptive contention that “complete objectivity about America is a characteristic only of God and Alexis de Tocqueville.”16 Americans do not like to be criticized by foreigners, and so perhaps it is not unnatural that Americans do not want to be taken to task and are irritated by the words of a foreigner named Osama bin Laden. I share this feeling whenever I hear criticisms of America from bin Laden, Jacques Chirac, Hugo Chavez, or some of the American politicians who seem endlessly foreign to me. But here I am, an American by birth, talking to other Americans about a life-and-death threat to our common country. Why should that effort draw such vitriol? Not surprisingly, Tocqueville has an answer for that too. As much as Americans hate hearing foreigners criticize their country, the Frenchman writes, they hate the same sort of criticism coming from American mouths even more. In America, Tocqueville explained, “as long as the majority is doubtful, one speaks;
but when it [the majority] has irrevocably pronounced [a consensus belief], everyone becomes silent and friends and enemies alike then seem to hitch themselves together to its wagon…I do not know any country where, in general, less genuine independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America…In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he leaves them…But the power that dominates in the United States [that is, a consensus opinion] does not intend to be made sport of like this. The slightest reproach wounds it, the least prickly truth alarms it; and one must praise it from the forms of its language to its most solid virtues. No writer, whatever his renown may be, can escape the obligation of singing the praises of his fellow citizens. The majority, therefore, lives in perpetual adoration of itself, only foreigners or experience can make certain truths reach the ears of Americans.17
Right, that explains it. President George H. W. Bush, President Clinton, and President George W. Bush, their political lieutenants, and their media and academic supporters drew and then retraced and blackened what Tocqueville called the “formidable circle” around the current consensus view of America’s war with al-Qaeda and other Islamists. That consensus? Simple: America is being attacked because of its liberties, freedoms, elections, and gender equality, and not for what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world. Like the issues of Social Security and Israel, this mantra has become another, increasingly venerable third rail in American politics, one that fits perfectly into the Cold War paradigm of defending the “Free World” against tyranny, this time the tyranny being Islamofascism. To question the mantra, therefore, reliably earns epithets but not a fair hearing.
Since resigning from the CIA, I have had the enormous good fortune and honor to teach a short course on al-Qaeda to U.S. military personnel, mostly junior officers and NCOs working on the collection and analysis of human intelligence. For this class, it is not appropriate to criticize serving political leaders, and so I decided to play the role of al-Qaeda’s intelligence chief in the United States. In this guise I present to the class an assessment—addressed to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri—of the status of al-Qaeda’s war against the United States based on what I believe would likely be al-Qaeda’s perspective. I chose this means of instruction for two reasons. First, bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their lieutenants have produced an enormous corpus of statements, speeches, and interviews. These materials provide a clear understanding of how our enemies see and think about their world, and highlight their goals, priorities, and motivations; they allow the construction of an analysis grounded in primary sources that display our foe’s most intensely held convictions. Second, the bipartisan criticisms I outlined above came after I spent twenty-plus years attending briefings for intelligence and military officers presented by senior Democratic and Republican administration officials and their media and academic associates. I felt certain, therefore, that many men and women in my little audiences would have heard such speakers extol U.S. strategy and discuss the weapons systems, manpower, allied countries, and propaganda plans that would be used to utterly defeat an enemy. I was also sure that they had heard little or no hint from such speakers that a living, breathing, thinking, talented, pious, and adaptable Islamist foe sits across the table from America. I therefore designed my talk to try to remedy that shortcoming.
What follows then is an assessment of the war written from al-Qaeda’s perspective. The format roughly follows a reporting format that is used by CIA station chiefs overseas to provide senior officials in Washington with an overall assessment of where things stand in their country or region. They are designed to give Washington a frank and realistic view of how things look to the senior U.S. intelligence officer on the ground, and—sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly—how likely U.S. interests are to be impacted either positively or negatively. These reports are generally closely held, initially going to the DCI and his senior lieutenants for both reading and a decision about further distribution. Many of these reports are sent to the president, cabinet-level officers, and their deputies.
Here, then, is what I believe to be a reasonable estimate of how al-Qaeda’s intelligence chief in the United States—and we can be sure there is one—would assess the status of the Islamists’ war against America eleven years-plus after his boss declared war on the United States. That is,
it shows al-Qaeda talking to al-Qaeda about al-Qaeda problems, failures, and successes; it is an effort, in other words, to follow General Lee’s rule of judging the enemy from his standpoint, not our own. I would add that the assessment is without the justifying citations from the Koran and the Prophet’s sayings and traditions that an Islamist would surely use but that are beyond the ken of a mackerel-snapping Catholic like me. Unlike U.S. intelligence officers, the al-Qaeda chief here had the distinct advantage of drafting his assessment in the context of the clear and plausibly attainable war aims that bin Laden has established. Those aims are captured in two terse phrases: “Bleed America to bankruptcy” and “Spread out American forces.”18 Finally, American readers will notice that Al-Qaeda’s chief writes in a very personal and informal manner that reflects Islam’s enduring egalitarianism. The outside-CIA readers of the same kind of CIA reporting format, of course, would expect—nay, demand—significantly more forelock-tugging.
TO: Al-Qaeda/Headquarters
FROM: Al-Qaeda/Washington
SUBJECT: Assessing the Jihad Against America
1. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.
2. Brothers Osama and Ayman: First, I give all praise and thanks to Allah for His grace and mercies, and then to our Prophet, peace be upon him, for the soundest advice and truest guidance. Next, Brothers, I give thanks for your messages this past year to the American people, especially Brother Osama’s recent speeches offering Americans another chance to embrace Islam.19 Your statements are clear and practical; you spoke directly to Americans and not to their arrogant leaders. You warned them that our al-Qaeda brothers are nearly ready to again attack inside the United States, and that they will do so unless U.S. policies in the Islamic world are changed. And you have clarified your words of warning in their own language through the English speeches of our mujahid American brother, Azzam al-Amriki.20